ORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti, Feb. 25 — When opposition leaders formally announced
Wednesday that they had rejected a peace plan the United States had hoped
would end the uprising roiling the country, they took pains to emphasize
that they have no links whatsoever to the armed groups sweeping through
Haiti.

But it was clear that the success of the insurgents, who on Sunday took
Cap Haitien with little resistance from supporters of President Jean-Bertrand
Aristide, has buoyed their movement.

"This is all the more reason for Mr. Aristide to go," said André
Apaid, a leader of the Group of 184, a civil society organization, in an
interview on Wednesday. "This is all the more reason to press harder for
what we see is the only way out, and it is only more clear that we need
to do this very, very quickly."

As Haiti's crisis lurches toward civil war, a tangled web of alliances,
some of them accidental, has emerged. It has linked the interests of a
political opposition movement that has embraced nonviolence to a group
of insurgents that includes a former leader of death squads accused of
killing thousands, a former police chief accused of plotting a coup and
a ruthless gang once aligned with Mr. Aristide that has now turned against
him. Given their varied origins, those arrayed against Mr. Aristide are
hardly unified, though they all share an ardent wish to see him removed
from power.

In Port-au-Prince, meanwhile, pro-Aristide forces were trying on Wednesday
to shore up control, erecting burning barricades and blocking main traffic
routes with concrete tank traps and shipping containers.

In Belle, an earthy, staunchly pro-Aristide neighborhood about five
minutes walk from the Presidential Palace downtown, a group of youths sat
and played cards, waving occasionally as groups of chimères, the
president's fearsome militiamen, sped by in trucks.

Groups of people chanted, "Five years, five years!" as the militiamen
passed, a rallying call referring to the president's insistence he serve
out his five-year term of office, ending in February 2006.

"Let the rebels come, we are not afraid," said Jean Toussaint, one of
the youths. "They have guns, yes, but we do, too."

"We'll attack them with knives and machetes," he said."We'll slit their
throats — they'll never make it to the palace."

On one side of those lined up against Mr. Aristide and his supporters
are political and civic opposition groups, which have led huge protests
in the capital and elsewhere, and have been subjected to violence by the
police and progovernment gangs. Born out of the disputed parliamentary
elections in 2000 and galvanized by political violence aimed at protesters,
the groups came together as the Democratic Platform.

On the other side are the armed insurgents, many with sinister pasts.
The uprising began in Gonaïves with a revolt by former Aristide loyalists,
known as the Cannibal Army, who turned against the president after their
leader, Amiot Métayer, was killed in September. The group, which
is now led by Mr. Métayer's brother Butteur, believes Mr. Aristide
ordered the killing.

They have been joined by members of the former Haitian Army, which was
dissolved after the United States returned Mr. Aristide to power in 1994.
The ranks of the insurgents include men like Louis-Jodel Chamblain, who
is accused of killing thousands of people in the aftermath of the 1991
military coup that removed Mr. Aristide, and Remissainthe Ravix, a former
army corporal notorious for his brutal methods.

The opposition groups with which the United States hoped to broker a
peace deal, the Democratic Platform and several political parties, say
they have no connection to the armed groups that have taken control of
much of the country. In a statement released on Wednesday in response to
the latest peace proposal, the Democratic Platform wrote that it "reaffirms
that it has no ties whatsoever to armed groups and that its quest for a
democratic solution is based on a strategy of nonviolence."

Those leading the armed uprising in turn affirm that they have no formal
links with the political opposition, but Guy Philippe, who is leading the
rebel army, hinted that the groups do have an open line of communication.

"Officially, there is no contact," Mr. Philippe said Tuesday in Cap
Haitien, Haiti's second-largest city. Asked if there were unofficial links,
Mr. Philippe smiled but would not answer.

Mr. Aristide has repeatedly said that the two groups are working in
concert, though he has provided no concrete evidence to back the allegation.
The leaders of the armed group said they had not been involved in negotiations
for a political settlement of the country's crisis.

But whether or not there are links between the groups, the common goal
of removing Mr. Aristide from power has led each to speak carefully about
the plans and goals of the other. Asked about the armed insurgents, Mr.
Apaid said he deplored the violence but did not expect the men to put down
their weapons until Mr. Aristide left office.

"Otherwise they would be slaughtered," Mr. Apaid said. Asked about the
role they would seek in a future government if Mr. Aristide was ousted,
Mr. Philippe and other rebel leaders have said they have no interest in
imposing military rule and that they support a plan put forward by the
Democratic Platform. That proposal calls on political parties, businesspeople,
intellectuals and civil society groups to form a transition government
of national unity. His men, Mr. Philippe said, would become the nucleus
of a reconstituted Haitian army.

Such odd bedfellows are not uncommon in Haiti's troubled history said
Henry Carey, a professor at Georgia State University who is an expert on
Haitian politics. But they seldom bring good fortune to the Haitian people.

"Haitians learned through history that the way to change their government
is intimidation and protest, not through elections and democratic procedure,"
Professor Carey said. Even if there are no formal links with militants,
he said, "the opposition groups have been too eager to make alliances with
anyone who wants to get rid of Aristide without carefully examining their
democratic credentials. That means inevitably the most lethal elements
are the ones who will grab power when the time comes."